$2 Test Identified Bird Shit as Cocaine. Cops Keep Using It to Arrest People
vice.com
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I don't know why...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190909/12232742945/ninth...
The Ninth Circuit:
"We recognize that the allegation of any theft by police officers - most certainly the theft of over $225,000 - is deeply disturbing. Whether that conduct violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, however, would not "be 'clear to a reasonable officer.'""
Note: Theft! Not asset forfeiture, but actual theft!
> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190909/12232742945/ninth....
> The Ninth Circuit:
> "We recognize that the allegation of any theft by police officers - most certainly the theft of over $225,000 - is deeply disturbing. Whether that conduct violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, however, would not "be 'clear to a reasonable officer.'""
Ignorance of the law is no defense...oh wait.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/06/witness-in-a...
"authorities have not identified a suspect or determined a motive."
Internal affairs clearly isn't a thing in the US. Or, if it is, it's a thing that doesn't work, coz when the witness of somebody getting murdered by a cop gets murdered in suspicious circumstances then it's not all that hard to identify a motive.
This is unheard of in other first world countries, especially in Europe. I'm American but I've lived in England, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland where the cops are really polite civil servants. In the UK, cops don't even carry guns.
The current state of affairs in the US, including rapid militarization of police, is a harbinger of things to come.
So, I mean, in they're view, they probably figure that they, well,
"Fixed the Glitch":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUE0PPQI3is
Other people's constitutional rights will likely be violated, but hey, "these things work themselves out" right?
/end sarcasm
How do people live with themselves when they knowingly implement shoddy products and processes like these that literally ruin peoples' lives? It's crazy.
Easy. The reasoning goes: Since people are convicted, those people must be guilty. Therefore, anything which is done in order to get people convicted is good and acceptable. They then sleep soundly at night knowing that they convict only guilty people.
(Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18450620#18453319)
The remarkable truth is that most regular people in the US don't actually care about wrongly ruining people's lives. Most people are primarily concerned with living their own life, and avoiding winning the shit lottery, and when they find out someone else won, they count their lucky stars it wasn't them and move on.
It would be far better if people invested time, effort, and money into dismantling the shit lottery itself. But most people don't have the resources. And, dismantling the shit lottery is a good way to increase your odds of 'winning' it. (Speaking truth to power most often doesn't end well for the speaker.)
Tests can rarely be both sensitive and specific. This test might have more Type I errors so it doesn’t commit Type II.
Likewise, a police officer is in the same dilemma. Are you really not going to arrest even though the test you were told to use came up positive?
If a society is to accept false positives then it follows that the arrest process would be less difficult and stigmatizing than it is in most places. Unfortunately, “the law is an ass” as they say.
It’s not about what else they trigger on but how likely that this would be the case in a set of controlled circumstances.
A cocaine test that triggers on bird poop is still completely acceptable unless carrying bags of powdered guano is the new rage these days.
Same thing with a GSR test that may be triggered with certain other chemicals, you only get reasonable doubt when there is a good explanation why would you’ve been exposed to those chemicals nominally.
BTW medical tests aren’t that different, it’s up to the doctors to make sure they exclude all other possible explanations besides what they are testing for and we don’t really complain.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/09/young-bla...
But overall, in the War on Some Substances, anything goes. Blame needs to start at the top. It's not like the cop purchased these widely-discredited field tests on their own.